'a lucid, densely packed, and extremely intelligent analysis of slavery... indispensable'Eric Hobsbawm, The Guardian'an inventive and perceptive book'Jack P. Greene, The American Historical Review'a valuable contribution to the study of West Indian history... Patterson has asked new questions and elicited some new answers in his discussion of the Jamaican slave society.'Elsa Goveia, The Times Literary Supplement'This book is a badly needed and well done study of the slave society of Jamaica... Refreshingly free of romanticism, it deals frankly with the impact of slavery upon all the members of Jamaican society.'Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, The Historian"[Orlando Patterson] is one of our great comparative and historical sociologists"Society
Introduction to the 2022 Edition: Life and Scholarship in the Shadow of SlaveryPrefaceI The Masters: An Overall View of SlaveryII The Slave Plantation: Its Socio-Economic StructureIII The Treatment of the Slaves in Law and CustomIV An Analysis of the Slave Population of JamaicaV The Tribal Origins of the Jamaican SlavesVI The Socialization and Personality Structure of the SlaveVII Social Institutions of the Slaves: Witchcraft, Sorcery and ReligionVIII Social Institutions of the Slaves: Economy, Recreation and ControlXIV The Mechanisms of Resistance to SlaveryXX The Cultural and Social Development of Jamaica: 1655-1865Appendix 1: Stephen Fullers Account of the Number of Negroes imported and exported at Jamaica each year, 1702-75Appendix 2: Exports from Jamaica, 1768Appendix 3: General Return from the Island of Jamaica, for Fifty-Three Years, ending 31st December 1836, abstracted from the Journals of the House AssemblyAppendix 4: Output, Income and Expenditure in 1832Appendix 5: Manuscripts and Official Publications ConsultedAppendix 6: Europeans in West Africa; Seventeenth to Eighteenth CenturiesAppendix 7: Africa as known to Europeans in the Mid-eighteenth CenturyIndex
Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and Chair of the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission at the Office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica.